


Invisible strings

by Elisexyz



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 10:32:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13005906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: The thing about always jumping in the middle of gunfire is that sometimes you actually get yourself shot. Which is no fun for anybody involved.





	Invisible strings

**Author's Note:**

> I love this show. Ward's betrayal hurt me. A lot. I was bound to write something about him and his little ~~fake~~ family worrying all over him. * _We could have had it ~aaall_ playing in the distance*  
>  You can find me on Tumblr as [heytheredeann](http://heytheredeann.tumblr.com) for more fangirling. The blog is supposed to be more about _Suits_ and _Supernatural_ but I am living for my _Agents of SHIELD_ tag these days.  
>  Enjoy!

“You should have _said_ something,” Skye keeps yelling. Grant isn’t sure if he is more annoyed by the high-pitched sound worsening the feeling that his head is about to explode or if he’s more impressed by the fact that in spite of how laboured her breath is – she has been helping him walk for a while now, after all – she _still_ finds enough oxygen to scream at him.

“I _did_ ,” he grunts, and it’s in moments like this that he doesn’t have to fake the grumpiness associated with Grant Ward, Agent of SHIELD. If it were anybody else and if he weren’t undercover – not to mention that he doesn’t have any other walking stick available at the moment – he’d probably put two in the back of her head to make her shut up.

He’s in a pretty big deal of pain, they are running away under the sun in the middle of the day, he has full _black_ tactical gear on and he can’t have access to any strong medication, not even when they’ll reconnect with the rest of the team, because he can’t risk getting under and spilling something along the lines of ‘John sent me here to spy on you, Hail Hydra’. Goddammit.

“ _Yes_ , when you lost your footing and _couldn’t get up_ ,” Skye replies. “I could have helped you.”

“It would have been too tiring to walk all the way like this,” he points out. “If you’d just listen to me—”

“I am _not_ leaving you here to bleed out, shut up, Ward.”

Grant rolls his eyes, because of course Skye won’t see beyond the temporary abandonment. He does know how to not bleed out until they come back for him – and he knows they _will_ , no matter the risk – and surely being forced to keep walking isn’t doing him any favours. She could keep going without the extra weight, with a bit of luck she’d stumble across their team soon and it’d be a hell of a lot quicker to follow her instructions than the GPS with that shitty signal in the middle of fucking nowhere. But try telling that to Skye.

“Alright, stop,” he says, planting his feet instead of keeping up with her pace as he’s tried to do up until now.

“What— _Ward_ , we need to keep going,” she protests, looking at him as if he just grew a second head. “You need help.”

“I’m going to bleed out a hell of a lot quicker if we keep going like this.”

“They could catch up with us,” she protests, and here she actually has half a point.

“I have a gun,” he says. His jaw muscles feel sore, not a good sign. “And if they _were_ after us, they’d get us anyway eventually.”

Skye seems pretty convinced at that, and finally she nods and helps him sit down. He tries not to make much of a fuss and a good percentage of the curses running through his mind stay in there, but he can’t help a couple of pained hisses, to which Skye quickly apologizes. Since there isn’t anything to lean on, she poses as his personal wall, letting him rest against her.

Initially, he had given a thought to trying to convince her again to go and get help, but he’s as comfortable as he could be in this situation and the idea of losing the support sounds pretty unappealing at the moment.

“You’ll be fine,” Skye assures. She’s stroking his arm, and Grant is torn between appreciating the gesture and wanting to order her to do something more useful, like helping with the pressure on the wound.

“I am not a child, Skye,” he replies anyway, because that’s what his cover would say. He can’t ever just be charming and likeable, can he?

She doesn’t seem to take offense at that, though. “But you’re hurt, let me mother you a bit, Super Soldier,” she huffs.

“I don’t need _mothering_ ,” Grant insists.

“Of course not.” She’s behind him, so he can’t see her face, but he’s pretty sure that she just rolled her eyes dramatically. “They’ll be here soon.”

Well, he really hopes so, because this is a really shitty way to die. First and foremost, because it’s not even _nearly_ the worst thing that he’s been through, it’d be ridiculous to die from a bullet during a relatively safe op. Also, John needs him. Grant needs to save him, to make sure that he doesn’t die because of SHIELD’s negligence. John dragged him out of hell, there’s no way Grant’s letting him go now.

Skye’s decided that it’d be a good idea to stroke his hair now. It feels a weird mix of nice and unsettling, because Grant’s beginning to like this cover a little bit too much. It’s also way too hot and he’s tired and in pain, which is how he justifies himself for slipping out of character for a second there.

“This is nice,” he lets out, his eyes half-closed to shut out the light at least a bit.

Skye’s fingers stop moving. “Woah,” she says, trying to take a look at his face judging by how much she’s moving and leaning over him. Can’t she just stay _put?_ “Exactly how _bad_ are you doing that you told me that?”

“Been worse,” Grant assures.

“What, you’ve died too once?” Skye replies. “Maybe we should have kept moving,” she adds after a couple of seconds.

“You can’t carry me, you are—” Grant protests, stopping to search for the right word. “ _Tiny_ ,” is the only thing that he can come up with.

“ _Excuse_ you?” she replies, and that outrage is so fake that even with the hammering pain and all the blood loss he can tell that she’s just trying to lighten the mood. If that girl doesn’t learn how to lie better under pressure, he’ll consider himself a failed SO— _Fake_ SO. “I am not _tiny_ , _you_ are a giant!”

“Whatever you say.”

“No, really, look at the evidence, you— you _tower_ over _all_ of us. Me, May, Fitz…”

“You are _all_ tiny.”

“ _Giant_.”

She doesn’t seem to have much more to say after that. Grant’s head is singing angelic choirs and thanking her, but on the other hand he knows that he’d better stay awake and alert. The chances are slim, but he may still need to shoot anybody that came after them. He’s pretty confident that he could still pull a gun with relative precision. He’s good.

He reaches for the holster, just to make sure that his firearm is still there. It isn’t, of course. “Where’s my gun?” he asks. It doesn’t sound too authoritative but it’s not his I-have-one-foot-into-the-grave voice either, thankfully.

“Your— what do you even need that for?” Skye asks, in disbelief.

“If someone tries to—”

“You can’t even _stand_.”

“No need to.”

“Don’t worry, SO, I got it covered,” she assures, before stretching her arm to show the gun she’s gripping. “I’ll protect you.”

“Oh God,” he groans, unsure if he should laugh or cry. Skye has never killed anyone. He’s not even willing to bet that she _has_ it in her to begin with.

“Hey!” she protests. “I am perfectly capable of—”

The sound of an engine makes her shut up abruptly, and Grant’s eyes shoot open as he tries to understand where the sound is coming from, what kind of car it is, if it’s the team or someone else, if he even has time to take that gun from—

“Guys! Finally!” Skye yells, letting out a relieved chuckle. Grant’s muscles relax and he draws a sigh of relief, even if he regrets it a second later, when it sets his abdomen in flames.

“Hey, Ward, still with us?” Coulson asks, kneeling in front of them before reaching for his hand, to pull it away from the wound and take a look.

“Yes, sir,” Grant replies, obediently letting his hand being guided away. He’s really fucking tired and he’d like nothing more than to _sleep_ now that they are no longer lost in the middle of nowhere with no back-up, but he knows that if he’s not around to protest when Simmons gets her hands on him she’ll give him all the morphine he’s refused to take up until now, so sleeping’s not an option.

Just a little longer, he’s endured worse, come on.

“Well, this looks— not very good,” Coulson comments, but he’s smiling, because the guy is always smiling. Grant Ward, Agent of SHIELD, finds it mildly irritating. Grant is actually pretty amused by the whole thing, most of the time. “But you’ll be fine,” Coulson adds. “We do have a stretcher, right?” he asks, turning towards the van.

“It’s coming,” Simmons answers.

Next thing Grant knows, they are easing him down on a stretcher, Skye is looking at him like he’s already lying in his grave, Fitz is leaning all towards him like a concerned mother and Simmons is already lecturing on recklessness and painkillers and how he’ll probably pull all of his stitches in a few days.

“Less talking, more patching up,” May orders, as soon as they’ve settled him on the van. Which warrants for a silent but extremely heartfelt ‘ _thank you_ ’ from Grant, as she goes for the driver seat.

Of course, it doesn’t get him any real silence, but Simmons at least lowers the speed at which she’s ranting.

“Oh bloody hell, you could have at least tried to clean it up—” she’s saying.

Grant wants to protest that there wasn’t really much time to stop and lick his injuries, but Skye of course wants to put her input.

“Yeah, sure, he didn’t even _tell_ me!” she announces. This is going to be fun. “I found out because he tripped and couldn’t get up on his own!”

“Ward!” Simmons, Fitz and Coulson protest, all at once. It’d be funny if it didn’t set off a nuclear bomb in his head.

“Please, don’t,” he mumbles, shutting his eyes. Not that the pain is going to stop him from defending his very reasonable and tactical choice. “She’d have panicked.”

“That’s not true!” Skye protests.

“And regardless,” Simmons interrupts, cutting away his gear. “You can’t just walk off a bullet wound, you need to—”

“Be careful, take care of myself, not reopen my stitches,” Grant completes, in the flattest tone he can manage.

“Funny, you say that like you actually _know_ ,” Skye comments, and Grant really can’t believe that they are giving him that much shit while he’s literally bleeding all over them. He’s almost tempted to protest and remind them that human decency and compassion are a _thing_ , but no, that would mean admitting to weakness and asking for sympathy, and that’s not in Agent Ward’s playbook. Sometimes Grant really hates the guy.

“Is he going to be fine?” Fitz asks, because thank _God_ there is still someone that’s more concerned about how he’s doing than how fun it is to lecture him.

“You didn’t even give me time to search for an exit wound yet!” Simmons protests. “Is it just one bullet?” she adds, this time looking at Grant’s face.

“Far as I know,” he replies. “Took one in the vest too.”

“Alright, let’s fix you up then,” Simmons smiles widely, the way she does whenever she’s nervous because they are putting someone’s life into her hands and ‘she’s not even that kind of doctor’. “Maybe I can give you some—”

“No,” he interrupts. Even if he’d really, really want to accept the medication. “It’s fine, just do it.”

“Are you completely sure?” she double-checks. He kinda wants to punch her in the face for that.

“ _Simmons_ ,” he warns, as threateningly as he can manage by lying on a stretcher.

“Alright, alright,” she gives up. “You stubborn idiot.”

The process is anything but fun. Nothing he’s never done before, but he still doesn’t like it whenever he has to get a bullet pulled out of him. Most of the team being physically unable to keep quiet doesn’t do his head any favours, but at least he has something to concentrate on while Simmons plays with his insides. Which doesn’t mean that Skye’s lame attempts at lightening the mood are funny, or that Fitz asking if he’s going to be okay every five seconds didn’t quickly go from being heart-warming to being pretty annoying, or that Simmons alternating between monologues on gunshot wounds and lectures on his recklessness and the importance of aftercare – _again_ – is actually pleasant. There are worse things than this, though.

To be honest, Grant thinks that his cover is insufferable half of the time, but if there’s one thing that he truly likes about Agent Ward is his weird little family. As far as covers go, he was fairly lucky.

Or very, very unlucky, depending on the perspective. It’s going to be a hard one to let go of.

 

 

 

 


End file.
